Health, Microbes, and More
This week I find myself looking to see if the 4 baby red foxes and their mother have made it through another day. This is day 3 after emerging from their den.
They now stay close to their den at all times. No sign of a father fox. Single parenthood is tough. (photos from first day)
Last weekend 4 baby red foxes emerged from their den for the first time. They were so exuberant, running all over the yard, and even up to my house. They had no fear that day.
Baby foxes are also called kits or cubs. They are about 4 to 5 weeks old.
A Barred Owl. They are usually resting in dense woods during the day, so I was lucky to see this large owl.
Some cultures view sighting an owl as a good omen. Hopefully!
The use of silver instead of antibiotics is incredibly popular as an alternative medical treatment for various ailments. It can be taken by mouth and swallowed (colloidal silver supplements) or applied to skin wounds. However, when colloidal silver is ingested, it stays in the body and builds up over time - in the skin, the organs, fingernails.
It's not clear how much colloidal silver you can ingest before it's harmful. But in large amounts it can result in a blue-gray tint of the skin, eyes, organs, nails, and gums - this condition is called argyria. Unfortunately, even if a person stops taking silver, the blue-gray tint remains. There have been a number of cases reported in the medical literature of argyria, for example a man who ingested it daily for one year ("to ward off infections").
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that colloidal silver isn’t safe or effective for treating any disease or condition and has taken action against a number of companies for making misleading claims about colloidal silver products.
The following article describes one such case in an elderly man in Hong Kong. Excerpts from Ars Technica: Man turns irreversibly gray from an unidentified silver exposure
When an 84-year-old man in Hong Kong was admitted to a hospital for a condition related to an enlarged prostate, doctors noticed something else about him—he was oddly gray, according to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine. ...continue reading "Silver Supplements Build Up In the Body"
Two woodpeckers, same tree, moved up and down in unison.
Spring is almost here!
We all want to live a long and healthy life, but what helps accomplish this? A recent study found that the years of education a person has makes a big difference - the more years of education, the longer the average life expectancy. By years!
In the large study (involving 3110 US counties), researchers found that life expectancy differed by about 11 years when comparing college graduates versus high school graduates or only some high school.
Life expectancy in the US was highest among college graduates (84.2 years) lower among those with some college education (82.1 years), lower still among those with a high school diploma (77.3 years), and lowest among those with some high school (73.5 years). When combining everyone (all groups), average life expectancy in 2019 was 80.1 years
Also, between 2000 and 2019, life expectancy increased the most for college graduates, less for the next 2 groups, and stayed the same for those without a high school diploma. Females also had a longer life expectancy than males in all groups, with the biggest difference in the high school groups (about 5.6 to 5.8 years), and the least among college graduates (3.1 years).
From Medical Xpress: US college graduates live an average of 11 years longer than those who never finish high school, study finds
Across more than 3,000 US counties, vast geographic differences with a widening gap were registered between the least and most educated, with a longer lifespan for those with a higher level of education. That's according to the latest analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington's School of Medicine that was published in The Lancet Public Health. ...continue reading "Years of Education and Life Expectancy in the US"
We all use plastic products in our daily lives. Our houses are usually full of plastics, especially modern houses. Examples: much furniture (e.g., engineered wood), upholstery fabrics (e.g., polyester), rugs (e.g., polyolefin), flooring (vinyl), foam in mattresses, synthetic fabric clothing, even the acrylic paint on our walls, and outdoor vinyl siding - it's all made with plastics from petrochemicals.
And when it burns in a fire, it's toxic and harmful to breathe.
Watch the video made by the UL Fire Safety Research Institute that show side- by-side burn comparisons between natural and synthetic furnished rooms. Pretty shocking! And yes, the all natural materials (e.g., wood, cotton) burned much slower and the smoke was less toxic than the synthetic materials. Flashover time (when escape becomes impossible) was under 5 minutes in the synthetic furnishing room and over 30 minutes in the natural furnishings room.
The following The Atlantic article sums up the dangers nicely. One vivid example is pointing out that most of our modern sofas are "basically blocks of gasoline". These are good reasons to consider using more natural materials in our homes (cotton, wood, glass, steel, etc.).
Excerpts from The Atlantic: What Happens When a Plastic City Burns
As flames rip through Los Angeles County, burning restaurants, businesses, and whole blocks of houses, it’s clear that the threat of urban fire has returned to the United States. But this time, the urban landscape is different: Modern homes are full of plastic, turning house fires into chemical-laced infernos that burn hotter, faster, and more toxic than their predecessors. ...continue reading "The Plastics In Our Homes Are Toxic In A Fire"
Everyone reading this will say: Ah ha...of course. When profits come first, then patient care suffers. A recent study looked at 73 private-equity acquired hospitals compared to 293 hospitals that weren't, and found that the patient care experience and patient-staff responsiveness worsened in hospitals taken over and managed by private equity.
And with each additional year of private equity ownership, these measures further worsened. As the study authors noted: this is due to profit-driven changes made by private equity. One of the researchers noted: "The evidence to date suggests that when private equity takes over a hospital, things generally get worse for patients."
From Medical Xpress: Patient care declines after private equity buys hospitals, study finds
In a paper published in JAMA, health policy experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) report that patient care experience worsened after private equity (PE) acquisition of US hospitals, as did patient-reported staff responsiveness.
Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, Anjali Bhatla, MD, and colleagues demonstrated that patient care continued to worsen at PE-acquired hospitals with each additional year following acquisition relative to non-acquired hospitals, suggesting that profit-driven changes made by PE may have downstream effects that accumulate over time. ...continue reading "Patient Experiences Worsen In Hospitals Acquired By Private Equity"
Well, well, well...it was a rocky holiday season. Lots of people got Covid, including myself. It hit everyone I know harder than expected, with symptoms much worse than with a flu virus.
Anyway, while visiting someone in a hospital I happened to be there when dinner was served. I was absolutely shocked that much of the hospital meal contained ultra-processed foods with absolutely garbage ingredients. Artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup (e.g., ginger ale), etc.
This is what sick people are given? Food ingredients linked to gut inflammation and a number of health problems? Perhaps they're making sure they get lots of repeat business.
Vanilla pudding ingredients: Water, nonfat milk, sugar, modified corn starch, palm oil, salt, sodium stearoyl lactylate, disodium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, yellow 5, yellow 6. (This was dessert.)
The Lemon Tea ingredients: Water, citric acid, instant tea powder, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, caramel color, acesulfame-K, sucralose, natural flavors.
Happy Holidays! Best wishes for health and happiness in 2025!